Summer 2009

Table of Contents - Vol. V, No. 2

 

Poetry    Essays    Translations    Fiction   

John Riley

 

Middle Age

There are no city-chewed streets,
only white and lilac blooming dogwood trees.
Cars with whisper engines
sweep past.

It is spring, not mid-winter,
already my light coat is a burden.
It is true, at every early-morning,
still dark, or pale-shadowed corner,

I meet my father, too.
My age, he is dead,
stares as blindly
as in life.

Why ask him to be forgiven
when I know not who I hurt?
I injure only the living.
He tracks my every step.

He is what has passed, while I wait
to be spirited.
Tonight,
I lay my head down with the dead.

 

© John Riley

 

            

Poetry    Essays    Translations    Fiction   

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